Economics Update

The Empire State Manufacturing Index droppeed 5 points, to -8.7 (0 is neutral), indicating further weakness.

Oil is down for the day by a quarter, but it hit a new record of $139.89/bbl before settling, and retail gasoline hit another record, now having hit a record on something like 25 days of going back a month.

It's not surprising that the dollar was down today, though I'm not sure if this drove oil, or oil drove this.

In banking, we have Barclays looking at selling shares to raise capital to cover losses in the US mortage market, and Lehman had some sort of hush-hush weekend meeting, which might indicate some problems, though it's reassuring that they reduced their mortgage holdings by 20%, which indicates a bit of common sense.